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Wednesday, January 9, 2019

the Baer Family Gathering of 2019

I rallied in time for our trip to Pennsylvania for our Annual Baer Family Reunion. Our family went up a day early — we wanted to visit my grandparents before heading to our host home — so I was relieved to be feeling so much better. I sure didn’t want to be guilty of contaminating the elderly.

But then on the trip up, my older daughter came down with a fever.

So much for good intentions.

See? Too sick to even smile straight.

Then that night, just when I thought I was home free, I developed a cough. Between my coughing and my husband’s hacking (he’d already been smitten), sleep was nearly impossible.

Answer me this: Why is it that it’s exactly when one is ill, when the body most needs to sleep, that it can’t? It makes no sense!

Then halfway through the next day, smack-dab in the middle of our noonday reunion feast, I lost my voice.

I felt fine, but there I was, stuck in a crowd of people unable to ask questions and respond — an extrovert’s version of hell. Whenever I did try to speak, it was like I’d created a black hole: everyone stopped talking while straining to catch my whispered wisps of words. The first person to understand would triumphantly repeat what I’d said, and once again the room would be bubbling with chatter and noise.

Even with my ailments, the weekend was loads of fun.

There was the Baer Foot Race complete with lots of slipping, thanks to the buckets of rain they’d been having.

Soooo...next time you get sick try skipping the over the counter meds and see if you sleep better and get well faster. All that over the counter garbage shuts down the lymph system which has to work to heal the body. We have not had a single over the counter med in our house for 5 years or more and we found that we do not need it. Marketing has made us feel like we must start popping pills at the first sign of distress when what we really should do is up the water intake and rest so we can heal.

Absolutely yes on the fluids and rest. But if you need OTC cough medication to get any sleep, then by all means take it (I mean, unless you're allergic to it or something). I go for "no meds during the day [unless fevers get near hazard level], medicate as necessary to sleep at night" for cold/flu stuff; not taking anything during the day means you're miserable enough to not push your body very far (yay?), but getting sleep speeds recovery, so even though the medication isn't helping directly, it's helping indirectly if your cough isn't waking you up every ten minutes. But of course, do what works with your body rather than taking internet (or marketers') advice. :-)

I've never met a natural cough remedy (other than Not Being Sick) that worked long enough to give you at least 6 hours or so of sleep, which Night-time Robitussin something-or-other manages for me about 90% of the time when I'd otherwise be only sleeping in fragments due to coughs and splutterings. If you've got natural recommendations that work for hours on somewhat-gunky coughs, rather than only for very short-term cough relief (honey, various herbal teas including peppermint, steaming oneself with menthol are all things I use - but the relief doesn't go past about an hour, max), I'd be interested to hear them!

(I should note that natural remedies that are pharmacologically active I'm a bit iffy about, since the levels of the pharmacologically active compounds in them vary a lot and supplements aren't regulated and even the plants you grow in your garden *definitely* do not have totally-even levels of things. I would not take an Advil tablet that said on it "contains somewhere between 50 and 500 mg of this medication!" (unless I was okay with getting either 50 or 500 and had no other choices available), and pharmacologically active compounds from plants that have beneficial effects and also side effects... well, they also make me say "hm" unless dosage really doesn't matter a ton and it's well-nigh impossible to overdose in that format, as with peppermint tea or whole foods [I mean, yes, you can definitely have some unpleasantness from overdosing on prunes, but it's not going to kill you, probably]. [or vitamin C heavy things like hibiscus - yes, it'll act as a diuretic if you get too much vitamin C in, and yes, that is exactly the opposite of the immune-system-friendly hydrating effect you want, but it's not really *hazardous*, as you're not likely to want your hibiscus tea strong enough to really dehydrate you][actually, hibiscus tea is a bad example as it makes my already-low blood pressure drop further and I get super-dizzy. But vitamins your body flushes out with water in general are less likely to do much harm in case of overdose, unless you *really* overdose.])

Lung Support from Hopewell Oils. You can put several drops on a cotton ball on your nightstand so you are breathing it all night. What most do not think of is that if you are coughing up gunk then the body needs to do that and shutting it down prolongs the illness. I would rather miss a few nights of sleep than have a cough that lasts 6 weeks.

Thank you! That's good to know about (also good to know that it's not going to give you sleep like OTC meds often can). I used to be anti-OTC-for-colds (for the "it's not treating the illness, it's treating the symptoms, so it isn't helping you" reasons) and now am pro-OTC for sleeping, and I have not noticed any difference in length of cough after a cold/flu (except that, in the twelve or so years since I started using OTC medications early in coughs at night and giving my lungs a break from phlegm-soaking, I haven't gotten bronchitis and I used to get it occasionally and thus be coughing for months - but who knows why that is).

I also used to be on Team Let The Body Do Its Thing, but honestly: the body often doesn't do quite the right thing. Allergies; autoimmune disorders; drizzly sinuses; fevers high enough to cause brain and other tissue damage; cramps.

So no, I do not trust my body-which-makes-many-other-demonstrably-counterproductive-decisions to produce exactly the right amount of gunk for maximal virus fighting/suppression/etc. (is gunk even particularly *useful* for virus-fighting or is it mostly an irritation response? or is it, being an excellent carrier and shield mechanism for virus transfer, just a virus-distribution vector that the virus inspires?), and I am fine with telling it to quit with the gunk-production for six hours so I can get some sleep, because sleep does demonstrably help with immune system function and bodily recovery. But to each their own. :-)

And the lung support essential oil on the nightstand trick is a good one to know about! Thank you!